Leon Nixon has narrated 53 audiobooks on Listento.it by 59 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 95 ratings. The most-rated is The Fate of Ten.
Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
Summary
Discover the astonishing, inspirational, and largely unknown true story of the 18 African American athletes who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, defying the racism of both Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South. Set against the turbulent backdrop of a segregated United States, sixteen black men and two black women are torn between boycotting the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany or participating. If they go, they would represent a country that considered them second-class citizens and would compete amid a strong undercurrent of Aryan superiority that considered them inferior. Yet, if they stayed, would they ever have a chance to prove them wrong on a global stage? To be better than anyone ever expected? Five athletes, full of discipline and heart, guide listeners through this harrowing and inspiring journey. There’s a young and sometimes feisty Tidye Pickett from Chicago, whose lithe speed makes her the first African American woman to compete in the Olympic Games; a quiet Louise Stokes from Malden, Massachusetts, who breaks records across the Northeast with humble beginnings training on railroad tracks. We find Mack Robinson in Pasadena, California, setting an example for his younger brother, Jackie Robinson; and the unlikely competitor Archie Williams, a lanky book-smart teen in Oakland takes home a gold medal. Then there’s Ralph Metcalfe, born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, who becomes the wise and fierce big brother of the group. Drawing on over five years of research, Draper and Thrasher bring to life a timely story of perseverance and the will to beat unsurmountable odds. From burning crosses set on the Robinsons’s lawn to a Pennsylvania small town on fire with praise and parades when the athletes return from Berlin, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice is full of emotion, grit, political upheaval, and the American dream. Capturing a powerful and untold chapter of history, the narrative is also a celebration of the courage, commitment, and accomplishments of these talented athletes and their impact on race, sports and inclusion around the world.
©2020 Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood, and Travis Thrasher (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Our Team
Summary
The riveting story of four men - Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige - whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history. In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy. Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series - all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books "Epplin’s epic saga is simultaneously a riveting drama and a searing portrait of the racism that plagued baseball for decades. This sharp and well-documented history will be a hit with baseball lovers and general interest readers alike." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
©2021 Luke Epplin (P)2021 Macmillan Audio
Bad Blood
Summary
Seth Garrett's family taught him that anything less than the best simply isn't an option. Now he's out to prove he can be the most successful Garrett - and Rachel McNeal fits the bill. She's pretty, hard-working, good in bed - and willing to finance his dreams. He thinks she's perfect wife material - until he meets her relatives and discovers they're far from perfect. No problem, Seth's got a replacement lined up to give him the good life he's entitled to... Steady and sensible, Rachel always believed the best about people. She thought Seth was the man of her dreams. But she can deal with the hurt and move on. Until she discovers the true reason Seth dumped her - and just how deep his contempt for her runs. She's done forgiving, much less forgetting. And taking his world apart piece by piece is only the beginning of her long-game payback...
©2015 Mary Monroe (P)2020 Tantor
The Lessons We Learn
Summary
Jayla Anthony had it all. At least, that's what it looked like from the outside. But from the inside looking out, she knew there was much more to life than her current situation. And when she decides to press the reset button on everything she thought she knew with her newly divorced status, her new occupation, and her move to a brand-new town, she hardly expects that to somehow end up including the young, handsome security guard from her company's building. Khalid Irving is a man on the come-up now that he's found a steady, good-paying job, a better living situation, and most importantly, a better outlook on life after a few years of no real direction. And now that he feels like he's on the right track, he's ready to pursue the woman who stole his attention the second she stepped into his building, even if that means he has to become her client first. Jayla knows the risk of mixing business and pleasure. Khalid knows how bad he wants her. And when the two finally get together, the chemistry is electric. But just because the fire is there, that doesn't mean there won't be a few tough lessons to learn along the way . . . . Contains mature themes.
©2018 Alexandra Warren (P)2019 Tantor
Wait for Your Love
Summary
How do you deal with a childhood crush that you never grew out of? You don't. You force it back to the far recesses of your mind and push through, but it's never gone for long. Dominique has been drooling over AJ since she was a child. Time and proximity have done nothing to tamp down on this puppy love crush that has developed into mature longing. All she wants is a little piece of something with him, that's all, but when she gets that piece, will it be enough? Or is she willing to wait longer for his love? Contains mature themes.
©2019 AshleyNicole (P)2019 Tantor
Nausea
Summary
Since the night he made an ill-advised decision to commit a pair of revenge killings, Nick has made his living as a professional murderer. Early on, he dispensed with guilt or emotion. But after a routine hit gets messy, Nick gets sick, and the conscience he thought he’d killed, along with dozens of other marks, comes creeping back into his brain.
Now, Nick’s profession and life are on the line, and he has begun stalking a perfectly innocent couple to see if he can snuff them out without the slightest hint of remorse...or if the humanity he worked so hard to suppress is making up for lost time.
A dark noir novel about human connection and repentance, Nausea is the story of a sociopathic killer in a war with himself, a war in which the lives of an uninvolved couple hang in the balance.
©2016 Ed Kurtz (P)2018 David N. Wilson
Remembering Kobe Bryant
Summary
Let Stephen Curry, Charles Barkley, Grant Hill, Reggie Miller, and more tell you what it was like to take the floor against one of the greatest of all time. With a foreword by Jerry West and a new tribute from the author about Kobe’s tragic death. When he entered the NBA in 1996 as a high-school star from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, Kobe Bryant faced enormous expectations. No one can deny that he rose to the challenge. Today, Bryant’s status as a future Hall of Fame player is assured. During his stellar career, Bryant won five NBA championships; was a 17-time All-Star, NBA MVP, and two-time NBA Finals MVP. He led the league in scoring in 2006 and 2007. Now for the first time, hear stories from opponents, teammates, and players about what it was like to go against Kobe in Remembering Kobe Bryant. Contributors include: Chris Webber Jeff Van Gundy Rick Barry Doc Rivers Dwayne Wade Draymond Green Giannis Antetokounmpo Russell Westbrook Carmelo Anthony And many more Kobe Bryant was the greatest basketball player of his generation - a former schoolboy prodigy whose moves are now imitated in gyms and playgrounds around the world. Remembering Kobe Bryant provides an unprecedented glimpse into what it was like to play against one of the best of all time. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2016 Sean Deveney (P)2020 Oasis Audio
Nana
Summary
Monica Stephens never knew her birth mother. Raised by a strict but loving adoptive parent, she blossomed into a woman with a thriving career as a pediatrician and a family of her own. But sometimes, she wondered about her origins. Especially her biological mother. Until Grace arrives. Confessing to be the birth mother Monica had long wanted to meet, Grace quickly becomes an indispensable member of the Stephens household. Cooking their meals. Looking after the children. Comforting Monica when the family dog is inexplicably killed. Tending to Monica as she falls ill to a mysterious sickness that, every day, makes Monica look and feel older. Meanwhile, Grace is looking better. More vibrant. More youthful. More seductive.... Monica's husband, Troy, knows something is up. He launches an investigation into the woman who demands to be called "Nana" and has taken over his home. But the truth is beyond their wildest imaginings. It seems Grace has done this before....
©2018 Brandon Massey (P)2019 Tantor
Black Software
Summary
Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today's digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s, McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. In turn, he argues that the forgotten figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet's birth and evolution paved the way for today's explosion of racial justice activism. From the 1960s to present, the book examines how computing technology has been used to neutralize the threat that black people pose to the existing racial order, but also how black people seized these new computing tools to build community, wealth, and wage a war for racial justice. Through archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, Black Software centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.
©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Abe
Summary
One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020 Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award "A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness...using popular culture in this way, to fill out the context surrounding Lincoln, is what makes Mr. Reynolds's biography so different and so compelling.... Where did the sympathy and compassion expressed in [Lincoln's] Second Inaugural - 'With malice toward none; with charity for all' - come from? This big, wonderful book provides the richest cultural context to explain that, and everything else, about Lincoln." (Gordon Wood, Wall Street Journal) From one of the great historians of 19th-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln, many years in the making, that brings him to life within his turbulent age David S. Reynolds, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning cultural biography of Walt Whitman and many other iconic works of 19th-century American history, understands the currents in which Abraham Lincoln swam as well as anyone alive. His magisterial biography Abe is the product of full-body immersion into the riotous tumult of American life in the decades before the Civil War. It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North and South. From New England Puritan stock on his father's side and Virginia Cavalier gentry on his mother's, Lincoln was linked by blood to the central conflict of the age. And an enduring theme of his life, Reynolds shows, was his genius for striking a balance between opposing forces. Lacking formal schooling but with an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement, Lincoln had a talent for wrestling and bawdy jokes that made him popular with his peers, even as his appetite for poetry and prodigious gifts for memorization set him apart from them through his childhood, his years as a lawyer, and his entrance into politics. No one can transcend the limitations of their time, and Lincoln was no exception. But what emerges from Reynolds's masterful reckoning is a man who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things than all but his most enlightened peers. As a politician, he moved too slowly for some and too swiftly for many, but he always pushed toward justice while keeping the whole nation in mind. Abe culminates, of course, in the Civil War, the defining test of Lincoln and his beloved country. Reynolds shows us the extraordinary range of cultural knowledge Lincoln drew from as he shaped a vision of true union, transforming, in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words, "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.
©2020 David S. Reynolds (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Tempt the Dragon
Summary
A. C. Arthur presents Book 3 in the Legion series. Contains mature themes.
©2021 Artist Arthur (P)2021 Tantor
Narcissistic Relationships
Summary
What is the definition of a narcissist? How did you ever get sucked into a relationship with one? Why do you feel so loved one moment, then helpless the next? Could you be in a narcissistic relationship? Or, are you justifying the acts of an abusive partner who actually can change? All these questions are answered inside this book. While diving into the world of narcissistic relationships, you will learn from the information provided to you in this book: What a narcissistic relationship is How to co-parent with a narcissist What steps to take to ensure your child will not develop NPD What ending a relationship with a narcissist looks like and what you can expect How to recover from the aftermath of the relationship How to counteract their hoovering techniques Steps to a brighter future after your relationship has ended And much, much more. The one thing that is explained thoroughly throughout this nook is that you always have control, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Your mind may be altered, your reality distorted, but you have the ability to take back your life. So, where do you go from here? What part of the relationships stage are you in right now? Can narcissists change or get help for their disorder? The answers to every question you have ever asked about narcissistic relationships are held inside this book. Don’t be a victim of narcissistic abuse. Get out of your shell and find the road to success, because you and only you can define who you are and who you are going to be. The choice is yours - find out how right now.
©2019 Lindsay Travis (P)2019 Lindsay Travis
The Neil Gaiman Reader
Summary
An outstanding array - 52 pieces in all - of selected fiction from the multiple-award-winning, number-one New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman, curated by his fans around the world, and introduced with a foreword by Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James Spanning Gaiman’s career to date, The Neil Gaiman Reader is a captivating collection from one of the world’s most beloved writers, chosen by those who know his work best: his devoted fans. A brilliant representation of Gaiman's groundbreaking, entrancing, endlessly imaginative fiction, this captivating volume includes excerpts from each of his five novels for adults - Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane - and nearly 50 of his short stories. Impressive in its depth and range, The Neil Gaiman Reader is both an entryway to Gaiman’s oeuvre and a literary trove Gaiman fans old and new will return to many times over. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Neil Gaiman; Foreword copyright (c) 2020 by Marlon James; Preface copyright 2020 by Neil Gaiman (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers